Page 14 - Mobility Management, May/June 2021

ATP Series
Power Move: Rethinking Proactive Power Assist
wheelchair, I determined that you most likely need a power-assist also, of some sort,” Merring said, describing a clinic scenario. “There’s lots of opportunities for power-assist integration. It’s another tool in the toolbox now. I keep learning more as I work with it, too. Light bulbs keep coming on.”
Medicare’s funding policy is one of the challenges potentially blocking more proactive prescription of power assist.
“There are some financial hurdles,” Merring acknowledged. “Power assist is a capped rental. It’s well funded and understood to be a medically necessary device, but it is a capped rental.
“That is something we talk about every day, and we need the whole industry to be saying, Is this really the best approach? Is this what our users need, or should this be funded the way a manual wheel- chair is and a power wheelchair is? It would really help [funding sources] to save money in the long run if they took a proactive approach versus a reactive approach.”
He cites the number of injuries to manual wheelchair users as another reason to think more proactively about power assist.
“I have to rule out that a walker doesn’t work, a cane doesn’t work, a K0004 manual chair doesn’t work,” Merring said, in explaining the documentation process. “I rule in the K0005 [ultralightweight] manual chair. [Power assist] is the same thing, the same idea: I want this person to be as functional and
independent as possible without pain and suffering in their shoulders, knowing that the data says 75 percent of people in six months are going to complain of shoulder pain.”
As for Medicare’s current capped rental policy, “It would make 100-percent sense that we would not think of this as a temporary device. We’ve identified a progressive nature or a stable, static need. How does this fall into this [capped rental] category?”
Mike Salvi, Director of Manual Mobility & Seating for Invacare Corp., agrees that proactively investing in power assist can pay dividends later. “I just listened to a video of one of our end users who can do more because he has power assist and can do the things that he wants to do,” Salvi said. “He described how he didn’t want to go out with friends sometimes because he was embarrassed to have to ask for help up a hill. He worried that if he got fatigued at the end of the night, he was going to need help. He was looking for a home, and he was looking for homes closer to public transportation.
“Then he got a power-assist device that gave him the confi- dence to say, ‘I can look farther out for a home because I can have more access now. I’m not afraid to go to the grocery store by myself; I can keep up with my kids.’ It’s not just about helping to prevent injury; it’s about saving your energy for the things you want to do. Take more joy out of your day.” m
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